Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun photography A school of artistic photography that emphasized using photography to mimic certain styles of contemporary painting, that flourished in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
  • noun Any artistic use of photography to imitate painting, especially using pictorial conventions

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

pictorial +‎ -ism

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Examples

  • While other prolific photographers and artists of the time were turning to sharp focus aesthetics or the social documentary philosophy of pictorialism, which is characterized by soft focus, heavy manipulation in the darkroom, and unusual printing processes.

    Examiner California Headlines 2010

  • I love the lighting in this film that recalls German expressionist silent film, pictorialism and later film noir.

    Current Movie Reviews, Independent Movies - Film Threat 2010

  • The emphasis overall is on emotional veracity over ritual, naturalness over pictorialism.

    Rodney Punt: Madame Butterfly Takes Wing in Santa Fe 2010

  • The emphasis overall is on emotional veracity over ritual, naturalness over pictorialism.

    Rodney Punt: Madame Butterfly Takes Wing in Santa Fe Rodney Punt 2010

  • Initially, Weston had been a leading exponent of pictorialism – a kind of arty, romanticised style of portraiture that took its cue from the Victorian painters like Whistler.

    Edward Weston: the greatest American photographer of his generation? 2010

  • The Met's house style was an extravagant pictorialism.

    Peter J Hall obituary David Jays 2010

  • It developed not into an open ended inquiry into the nature and causes of imagery, but a manichean struggle between the computational pictorialism championed by Kosslyn and his supporters, and the computational description theory still most ably and enthusiastically represented by Pylyshyn.

    His Name Was Do Re Mi 2009

  • In a subsequent paper, Pylyshyn (1978) introduced an important new argument against pictorialism, based on the concepts (which he introduced) of cognitive penetrability and impenetrability.

    His Name Was Do Re Mi 2009

  • An empirically well informed philosopher makes the cognitivist case against pictorialism.

    His Name Was Do Re Mi 2009

  • This fills out the argument in defense of quasi-pictorial theory given earlier (Tye, 1988) and gives an admirably clear philosophical account of the analog/propositional debate and the conceptual basis of quasi-pictorialism.

    His Name Was Do Re Mi 2009

  • In the context of these various definitions of a photo, Nathan Jurgenson forwarded me this Wikipedia link about a 20th century art collective called Group f/64, who were rigorously against “pictorialism” (manipulating photographic captures with some aesthetic intention in mind) and whose proto-Dogme manifesto defined “pure photography” as “possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form.”

    The envisioners Rob Horning 2024

  • In the context of these various definitions of a photo, Nathan Jurgenson forwarded me this Wikipedia link about a 20th century art collective called Group f/64, who were rigorously against “pictorialism” (manipulating photographic captures with some aesthetic intention in mind) and whose proto-Dogme manifesto defined “pure photography” as “possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form.”

    The envisioners Rob Horning 2024

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